Music For Pleasure was a division of EMI budget
label, aimed at children. The material appearing on Surprise Surprise
singles seems to have been a mixture of reissues (from EMI and from other
labels) and cover versions of hits with kiddie-appeal; often, the artists were
left uncredited. Picture sleeves were the norm; the reverse of these
sleeves featured a drawing for children to colour-in. The dates given on
the records often refer to the original year of issue rather than to that of the
'Surprise Surprise' release, which makes dating them problematical, The first
batch of fifteen were due to appear on the 22nd of May 1970. Apparently
there should have been sixteen singles, but one of them was dropped after poor
sales in test-marketing. The 'reject' may well have been NO-8, which
coupled songs by Jessie Matthews and Jon Pertwee: it was eventually released in
1973 as FP-10019, perhaps in response to Pertwee's success in the role of Doctor
Who on the BBC. Most of the other dates given in the discography below are
fairly tentative. Several different numerical series were used, starting
with NO-0 for the first twenty-six issues and moving on to FP-0 for issues 27 to
66; several numbers seem not to have been used. In 1972 numbering was
changed to the FP-10000s; the label doesn't seem to have survived past FP-10068,
which came out in 1976. For most of its life the label was yellow in
colour, but items in each series occasionally appeared in different colours such
as grey, blue, green or red. I was never sure whether the label
should be called 'Surprise Surprise' or 'Music For Pleasure', as both names were
featured prominently on the label of all the examples that I had seen.
Imagine my delight, then, when I found the Mike Sammes single pictured above (8)
in a charity shop. The design had been changed: the 'Music For Pleasure'
line had disappeared, but the 'Surprise Surprise' part remained, confirming that
that was indeed the right name for the label. Confirmation eventually
arrived in the form of that article from 'Billboard', which says refers to
"...the national launch of its Surprise Surprise children's line, which was test
marketed in Lancashire and central London.